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HE CHRISTIAN 
IN WAR TIME 

FREDERICK LYNCH 



Class 




Book 



Ti^htN^ 



COF/RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The 
Christian in War Time 



The 

Christian in War Time 



BY 

FREDERICK LYNCH, D.D. 

WITH FOUR ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS 

BY 

Charles E. Jefferson, D.D., Robert E. Speer, D.D., 
William I. Hull, Ph.D., and Francis E. Clark, D.D. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1917, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



Prmted in the United States of America 



DEC -6 1917 



New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London : 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 



©CI.A479425 



THE United States is gradually beginning 
to realize tiiat it really is at war. Prices 
are soaring, conscription has passed and 
when it becomes operative we shall realize as we 
have not yet done that war is upon ns. Commis- 
sions have been here from England, France, Italy 
and Russia conferring with the government on 
methods of warfare, and on the part the United 
States is to take in the conflict. 

There are a great many good Christians in the 
United States who do not like war but who feel 
that this war was inevitable and that the country 
was dragged into it by no fault of its own. They 
have found it difficult to reconcile themselves to 
it, and probably would not have been able to do 
so for the excuses given for entering upon the war. 
!N'ow that they have discovered that the real rea- 
son for President Wilson taking the step he did 
was the fear expressed to him by the Allies that 
the outcome was extremely dubious unless they 
had immediate help, these people have become 
more resigned to it. They see that we are faced 
with two alternatives, Prussianism or democracy 
ruling the future, and that democracy and all it 
stands for is in danger of being lost both to the 
old world and to the new. It was this that pressed 

5 



6 THE CHRISTIAN" II^" WAR TIME 

us into the war, and not simply a desire to protect 
American property and American lives. The 
President, of course, intimated this in his proc- 
lamation, but it would have been better if the ad- 
ministration had frankly told the real facts at 
that time instead of waiting until now. It may 
be a long war, it may be a short one. Nobody 
knows anything about it, and all prophesyings 
are valueless. Of this, however, we may be cer- 

/• tain: that it will not stop immediately, and that 
., J we are soon going to be involved in it on the seas, 

and a little later on the land. 
\^ % , The Christian in war time! How strange it 
^-> ^ / sounds ! But it is a fact. Being a fact, Christian 
people have got to adjust themselves to the new 
situation. Especially is this true since the Chris- 
tian is by profession a believer in goodwill and 

'^ peace. He has got to face the fact that, much as 
*v5>' he regrets it, he is at war with another group of 
people which also calls itself Christian and ac- 
knowledges the same Lord, and he has got to take 
part in the maiming and destruction of these peo- 
ple, although doing so, as he sincerely believes, 
to save civilization and Christianity to the world. 
The Christian in war time; how shall he conduct 
himself ? 

In the first place he should see to it that never 
is the war degraded into a desire for aggrandise- 
ment, or for territory, or for revenge or retalia- 
tion; not even in order to protect American 






<" 



THE CHRISTIAN^ IK WAR TIME 1 

property. The preacher in tlie pulpit, the Chris- 
tian editor in his paper, the layman in all his 
conversation must see that the war is waged only 
with those high ends in view which were pro- 
claimed by the President of the United States at 
the beginning, and were given as the motive of 
our nation in entering upon this road of terrible 
suffering and sacrifice. Let us recall his words 
to our minds. He said "Our object now, as then, 
is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice 
in the life of the world as against selfish and auto- 
cratic power, and to set up among the really free 
and self-governed peoples of the world such a con- 
cert of purpose and of action as will henceforth 
ensure the observance of these principles. . . . 
It is a fearful thing to lead this peaceful people 
into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of 
all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the 
balance. But the right is more precious than 
peace, and we shaU fight for the things which we 
have always carried nearest our hearts — for 
democracy, for the right of those who submit to 
authority to have a voice in their governments, 
for the rights and liberties of small nations, for 
a universal dominion of right by such a concert 
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to 
all nations and make the world itself at last free." 
This is the noblest proclamation of war that 
has ever been written. If war were ever per- 
missible in the Christian ethic it would be only. 



8 THE CHRISTIAlSr m WAR TIME 

with such a purpose or for the immediate de- 
fense of an attacked nation. If we must enter 
upon this war, then, let every Christian man see 
that this purpose never be lost sight of in its 
course. Churches might well print on cards the 
section of the President's proclamation quoted and 
give it to every man enlisting in their parishes. 
There will be many who will try as time goes on 
to turn it into a war of conquest. Many will be- 
gin to insist that the United States have a part in 
the spoils. If American ships are sunk many will 
begin to cry for revenge. The Christians, the 
churches, must resist all clamor of this baser sort 
and insist that the war be waged only for uni- 
versal democracy, the rights of the smaller nations 
and the future peace of the world. 

The Christian must insist that no element of 
hatred be allowed to enter this war. He is the 
follower of Him who said, "Love your enemies." 
He loved them himself, and he who hates is no 
follower of Jesus Christ. Here again the Presi- 
dent has spoken in Christian terms. He said: 
"We have no quarrel with the German people, 
we have no feeling towards them but one of sym- 
pathy and friendship. It was not upon their im- 
pulse that their government acted in entering this 
war. It was not with their previous knowledge 
or approval. . . . The world must be made 
safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted 
upon the tested foundations of political liberty. 



THE CHKISTIAIT IK WAK TIME 9 

We have no seMsli ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities 
for ourselves, no material compensation for tlie 
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one 
of the champions of the rights of mankind. We 
shall be satisfied when those rights have been made 
as secure as the faith and the freedom of the 
nations can make them. Just because we fight 
without rancor and without selfish object, seeking 
nothing for ourselves hut what we shall wish to 
share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel con- 
fident, conduct our operations as belligerents with- 
out passion and ourselves observe with proud 
punctilio the prvnciples of right and fair play we 
profess to be fighting for." (The italics are mine.) 
Here is a great opportunity for the Christian. 
Germany has expressed toward England words of 
hatred of which even she herself is now ashamed. 
She has performed acts of inhumanity of which 
her children will be ashamed in the future. There 
has been little of this on the part of England so 
far, but there have been some unchristian utter- 
ances and some reprisals. Would that every 
Englishman might have uttered during the course 
of this war only such sentiments as those which 
fell from the lips of Edith Cavell as she was 
being executed. "Standing as I do in view of 
God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not 
enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to- 
ward anyone." France has been noblest of them 



10 THE CHRISTIAE" m WAR TIME 

all, but she, too, has descended once or twice to 
reprisals, provoked by terrible barbarities enacted 
on her territories. But here is the opportunity 
of America to set a new ideal to the world. Let 
every Christian see that no words of hatred escape 
his lips, no cry for revenge, whatever happens. 
Let every Christian pastor impress upon the boys 
going from his parish their duty to keep unsullied 
the fair name of America and to keep it true to 
the high utterances of the President in this re- 
gard, and never by word or deed to show bestial 
hatred toward the enemy. Let our army, if by 
and by it enters upon fields occupied by the enemy, 
show to the enemy that it fights not in hatred but 
in knightly crusade for right and peace. Let every 
Christian in America insist that this nation vio- 
late no slightest iota of international law or tradi- 
tion in its warfare on sea and land, that it permit 
no act of ruthlessness, of wanton destruction or 
of lust. Let it be shown to all the world that 
American soldiers are above atrocities of any kind. 
Let the Christians of America insist that there be 
no reprisals in kind for atrocities perpetrated by 
the enemy. We believe that after this war is over 
all high-minded Christian Englishmen will regret 
that they ever stooped to German methods in 
reprisal for inhumanities practiced upon English 
subjects. Let all American Christians insist at 
the beginning that America shall not stoop to 
anything in her warfare that is not knightly. 



II 



THESE are going to be trying days for many 
sincere Christians. Christians are not 
going to be able to see eye to eye. The 
experience in England has shown that there is 
going to be much more difference of opinion on 
the righteousness of war for Christians than there 
has ever been in any previous time. Eifty years 
ago, and even less, objection to war under any 
conditions was confined almost entirely to the 
Society of Friends. But the general pacifist 
movement has made great progress since those 
days and many converts to this point of view have 
been gained from all religious communions, and 
many of the labor and Socialist groups hold the 
same belief. Thus England, much closer to the 
war than we and with vital interest much more 
threatened, has witnessed the formation of a Fel- 
lowship of Eeconciliation of some four thousand 
members, mostly young men and women, not pre- 
dominantly Quakers, who have taken a radical 
stand against war as being in its essence un- 
christian under any conditions. Furthermore, 
many of the thousands who have come into prom- 
inence as conscientious objectors in England, have 
had no connection with the Society of Friends. 

11 



12 THE CHRISTIAN IN WAE TIME 

All this is referred to simply because it indi- 
cates what will surely be the experience of Amer- 
ica. The peace movement has made much greater 
progress here than in England. There are thou- 
sands of people in America whose consciences will 
not let them kill their fellow men in settlement of 
international disputes. Some of these might feel 
that were this country invaded they might then 
be justified in resisting attack, but under present 
conditions they cannot go forth to kill. They are 
all the more strengthened in this position because 
of the great number of people who were opposed 
to entering the war at all. One of the leading 
Congressmen, just after the vote had been taken 
in Congress, said that had they voted according 
to their own convictions or according to the con- 
victions of the country at large, fully half of 
Congress and half of the nation would have voted 
not to enter the war. It was unnecessary to say 
this, for the utter failure of men to volunteer 
shows how little enthusiasm there is for the war. 
Many Christians who are standing by the war 
now because they have heard that there was dan- 
ger of the allies, and with them of democracy, 
being crushed under foot, have reconciled their 
consciences to participation in it. On the other 
hand, many men who have conscientious objec- 
tions to making war are strengthened in their 
position because of the great numbers who do not 
feel that the United States was justified in going 



THE CHEISTIAiT IN WAR TIME 13 

into this war. We shall, therefore, find, in light 
of all the ahove facts, that there is going to be 
an infinitely greater number of conscientious ob- 
jectors than there would have been twenty-five 
years ago, and that they are going to come from 
every rank of life. 

Here is the chance for the Christian in war \^ 
time, even though he himself believes in the in- 
evitability of this war, and in its righteousness, 
to render a great service to his country, to real 
and lasting democracy, to freedom of conscience, 
which is Protestantism in its very essence, and 
to Christianity itself. He could insist that no 
man be forced to act against his lifelong, or 
deep-rooted convictions, his religious principles, 
or his conscience. ITothing is more fatal to de- 
mocracy, and nothing is more un-Christian, than 
to make a man break what is his allegiance to 
Jesus Christ, or to God, or to his own conscience. 
Let us not make the terrible mistake England had 
made in this regard. The one thing in this war 
of which many of the finest Englishmen are 
ashamed, the only thing that has approached 
Prussian war methods, has been her harsh and un- 
Christian treatment of conscientious objectors. 
She has seen her mistake and has relaxed her 
severe treatment of these men. When our con- 
scription law begins to operate we shall have many 
more conscientious objectors than had England. 
Our colleges and our labor organizations are full /'■-^'^^^ 



14 THE CHEISTIAJS" IN WAR TIME 

of them, and there are a few in our churches. 
Every Christian should take the part of these 
men, for it is because of what they believe about 
Christ and his teaching that all men are brothers, 
that they object. There is no democracy left in 
the nation, no Protestantism in the church, when 
men are forced to do what they believe Jesus 
Christ absolutely forbids. There is no gain in 
winning a war if men have been forced to sell 
their souls before they will fight. To imprison 
them as England has done, when they refused to 
fight, is simply to say publicly that Christian 
consistency is a crime. Let us be Christian toward 
these men. Let us appoint commissions in each 
community for examining them as to their sin- 
cerity, and let us see that these commissions are 
composed of the best men of the community, 
always including some clergymen, and not of men, 
as was often the case in England, who have no 
sympathy either with Christian conviction or with 
democracy. AU army ojficials should be kept off 
the commissions. With the exception of the labor 
and Socialist groups, it will almost always be 
found that the conscientious objector is identified 
with some church. His case, in this regard, might 
well be left by the government to his pastor and 
church officers. The pastor ought easily to be able 
to determine the sincerity of the objector, and 
report to the authorities. If the objection is sin- 
cere any Christian ought to stand by the men to 



\^ 



THE CHKISTIAK IK WAE TIME 15 

the end. Eor they are only doing what, accord- 
ing to their thought, Christ did. 

And now just a word about the Christian and 
the "pacifist." I put quotation marks about the ^' 
word, simply because it has now come to have a 
different content from that which it has usually 
carried. Previous to the outbreak of the war, the i 
pacifist was anyone who believed that judicial 
processes ought to be substituted for war in the 
settlement of international disputes, and he worked 
for World Courts, Leagues of Peace, Arbitration 
Treaties, Commissions of Inquiry, and in general 
for the bringing of nations up to that ethical plane 
on which individuals live. A great many felt '^ 
honored in being numbered in this list. It was led ^ 
by great statesmen, renowned ministers of the gos- 
pel, and the presidents of universities. But just '^' 
at present the pacifist is an object of scorn and 
ridicule, and he is in many places left to bear his 
witness to the truth as he sees it, alone and un- 
heeded. It is just at this time that his Christian 
brother who differs from him should recognize 
that it may take more real courage to be a pacifist 
than to be a soldier in the war. After all he is 
only trying to apply to a concrete case the princi- 
ples which many who now conscientiously be- 
lieve in the war have been preaching heretofore. 
Anyone who at this time says evil things about 
him or accuses him of lack of patriotism does not 
show a Christian spirit, for it is just because of 



16 THE CHRISTIAN IN WAR TIME 

his allegiance to the Christ principles that he 
perseveres in his belief that the methods of love 
overcome evil in the long run more effectively than 
do the methods of war, and it is just because he 
loves his country that he wishes to keep her true 
to what he believes to be the principles of democ- 
racy. I happen to know a good many pacifists 
intimately and all this talk about their being pro- 
German is pure nonsense. Most of them condemn 
the methods of Germany in most unsparing tierms. 
It is simply that they believe that there is a better 
way of overcoming evil than by force. And they 
have very strong probabilities on their side, for 
no matter what may be the attitude of twentieth 
century Christianity toward war — and I am not 
arguing here that it is the wrong attitude — it can- 
not be denied that the great teacher, Jesus, both 
taught and practised the principles followed by 
the pacifist. And anyone who knows the Church 
Fathers knows that almost without exception they 
taught that a Christian must not kill under any 
circumstances. You who read this should also 
remember that the pacifist is only trying to apply 
to this particular crisis the general peace princi- 
ples you have been advocating until recently. You 
may be right in believing that they will not work 
at just this moment; but at least be patient with 
him if he believes they will work on all occasions. 
He is no more a traitor than are you. He is after 
the same ends, but he advocates different weapons. 



THE CHRISTIAIT I:N' WAR TIME 17 

Thomas Mott Osborne believes just as tborougliiy 
as does the average prison warden that society 
must be protected from the criminal, but he be- 
lieves there is a better way of achieving this uni- 
versal aim than the way of force advocated by the 
wardens of yesterday. Some day we may all be 
glad that the pacifist kept alive these principles 
which now bid fair to be swallowed up in the world 
weltering in blood. Let us as Christians at least 
recognize in him the same sincerity and grant 
to him the same privileges of free speech that we 
claim for ourselves. 



Ill 



THERE are many good Christians who can 
enlist in the army or the navy at this time 
and go straight to the front in France or 
engage in battle with submarines. They believe 
that civilization is at stake and that it is the duty 
of the United States to save it. They will enter 
this war with a clean conscience, believing with the 
President that the only way to make the world of 
the future safe for democracy is to exterminate 
Prussianism once and forever. Or they consider 
the acts of Germany against American ships and 
lives equal to a direct invasion of the United 
States. Many believe that they are going forth 
to protect humanity against a ruthless and savage 
foe. As one who has long been among our most 
enthusiastic pacifiists expressed it: "Submarine 
warfare against neutrals is in no wise different 
from piracy and you can not reason with pirates. 
You can only capture them." Many of these men 
also believe that they are going to win a lasting 
and enduring peace for the world by conquering 
those who willfully break the peace and do not 
believe in peace. They are following their own 
conscience and believe they are pursuing the Chris- 
tian course. 

18 



1 
THE CHKISTIAIT IN WAE TIME 19 

On the other hand there are many Christians 
— a much larger number than there ever was be- 
fore and a growing number — ^who do not believe 
in the resort to arms except to repel an enemy 
who actually lands on our shores and attacks our 
homes, and whose conscience will not let them 
take human life. What can they do fit this time ? 
How can they serve humanity and their country 
while the nation is at war ? It is to these I would 
address a few words, for they are sorely per- 
plexed. \ ' 'I 

First, they can serve their country by offering 
their services in ambulance corps and as nurses 
of the wounded. The Friends in England present 
an interesting instance of this very thing. When 
the war broke out there was a large group of stu- 
dents in Cambridge and Oxford who believed that 
their discipleship to Jesus Christ forbade them to 
take human life. IFnder the leadership of Philip 
Baker, son of J. Allen Baker, M.P., Chairman of 
The World Alliance for Promoting International 
Friendship through the Churches, who is well 
known to Americans, they organized an ambulance 
corps consisting of fifty or sixty splendid young 
men. They collected several thousand dollars from 
their sympathizers, purchased motors, and went 
straight to the front in France. Here they did 
splendid service that attracted the attention of the 
whole world. Their bravery was a matter of com- 
ment everywhere. Daily they went into the very 



20 THE CHEISTIAK IK WAE TIME 

thick of the fighting, exposing themselves equally 
with the soldiers, rushed the wounded back to the 
hospitals in their ambulances and then returned 
for other wounded men. Thus they went back and 
forth on their work of mercy and they even re- 
fused to carry the revolvers given to Red Cross 
workers in all the armies. Already groups of 
Eriends here have offered themselves for such 
service. 

Secondly, they can enlist under the Red Cross 
Society and go to the front to assist on the battle- 
fields, in the hospitals, and in the camps. The 
Red Cross physicians and nurses will need many 
aids of this class. 

Thirdly, they can offer themselves for work in 
prison camps. Many Christians in all the Eu- 
ropean countries have rendered beautiful service 
in this way. One of the most conspicuous in- 
stances is that of a young German of Berlin, Dr. 
F. Siegmund-Schultze, another peace worker well 
known in America. He has been untiring in his 
efforts to lighten the miseries of English prisoners 
in Germany, increasing their comforts, seeing 
that they had religious services in their own 
tongue, sending news to their relatives, and in 
every way trying to practice real Christianity in 
the midst of this terrible catastrophe. 

Fourthly, they can offer their services to the 
Young Men's Christian Association. This organi- 
zation, cooperating with the Federal Council of 



THE CHKISTIAISr IN WAK TIME 21 

Churches, has already put in operation extensive 
plans for work in the camps where our soldiers are 
to be trained. They will open halls where writing 
and reading can be engaged in, and where healthy 
amusement will be provided. They will do every- 
thing in their power to keep the zones about the 
camps clean, and to keep the men out of vicious 
resorts and saloons. With the regular chaplains 
to be provided by the government in cooperation 
with the Federal Council, they will carry on re- 
ligious work among the soldiers and will hold 
meetings in the halls to be provided. 

Fifthly, they can establish intimate connection 
with every young man leaving their, own village 
or parish and can see that he has a Bible, and that 
books and literature are sent to him regularly. 
They can write to him at the camp or at the front, 
and can see that others write, for the young man 
away from home hungers for letters. They can 
see that boxes containing comforts of all kinds are 
sent to him. Christians living near camps can 
render most salutary Christian service by inviting 
the young men to their homes. 

Sixthly, they can take it upon themselves to 
care for the families of those who have enlisted. 
These families will need money and other kinds 
of help. They will need companionship in their 
loneliness and in their anxiety for those who have 
gone. As news of the death or capture of father, 
husband and brother comes back, they will need 



22 THE CHKISTIA]!^ IN WAE TIME 

consolation. The children, with the father away 
and perhaps lost, will need a father's care and 
guidance. Here is an opportunity for the Chris- 
tian to render beautiful service. 

In these and in many other ways the Christian 
who cannot kill but who wants to serve his coun- 
try and the cause of democracy and humanity, can 
do his part. 

Here let me quote the suggestive questionnaire 
recently issued by the Friends' Committee on 
JSTational Service, with headquarters at Philadel- 
phia. The questionnaire has been sent out solely 
for the purpose of learning the sentiment of young 
men Friends, and it is specifically set forth that 
the answers are not to be considered binding in 
any way. The first three questions are designed 
for those who desire to offer themselves for service 
in the present emergency, for those who do not de- 
sire to enter for service until drafted, and for 
those who feel that they cannot accept compulsory 
service of any kind. The second section of the 
document reads: 

"According to the situation as I see it to-day, if 
I should undertake service as fi. result of the war 
situation, I should prefer to do so in the following 
manner : 

"(1) By going abroad to assist in the relief 
work carried on by English Friends. 

"(2) By engaging in relief work under the 
American Red Cross. (An organization which in 



THE CHKISTIAN IN WAE TIME 23 

time of war will become subject to the military 
authorities. ) 

"(3) By engaging in relief work under an am- 
bulance unit maintained by American Eriends, if 
it should be found practicable to organize such a 
unit. 

"(4) By relieving suffering among alien en- 
emies. 

"(5) By engaging in agriculture to conserve the 
food supply. 

"(6) By accepting 'alternative service' in the 
noncombatant branches of the military or naval 
service. 

"(Y) By enlisting in the military naval service. 

"(8) By entering the Y. M. 0. A. work at 
training camps. 

"(9) By engaging in social welfare work." 



IV 



WASTE is a sin under even normal con- 
ditions. It becomes almost a heinous 
sin in times of great stress like these. 
It is the duty of every Christian now to guard 
against it in every form. By so doing he may 
render a great service to his country. 

The waste in the preparation of food is enor- 
mous. The food thrown away by the great hotels 
and restaurants of our country would feed hun- 
dreds of thousands. This has been so strikingly 
put in a leaflet recently issued by the ISTational 
Emergency Food Garden Commission called "Eood 
Thrift" that I quote from it here: 

"American kitchens waste enough food each 
year to feed the whole British army in France 
and several divisions of the French army. 

"It is estimated that the annual food waste in 
the United States amounts to $700,000,000. This 
is believed to be a conservative estimate. There- 
fore, all we need to do to make certain supplying 
all food required and of winning the war is to cut 
out that waste. 

"It is entirely possible and feasible to do this. 
It is only a question of every man, woman and 

24 



THE CHKISTIAIT IN WAR TIME 25 

child in tlie United States becoming individually 
thrifty in the use of food. 

"The military leaders of our nation and of our 
allies agree that the outcome of the war is a 
matter of food. Thus every little food saving, 
trivial and unimportant as it may seem, adds to 
the aggregate of the food supply which can make 
victory certain. Without thrift at home all the 
outpouring of blood on foreign battlefields may be 
in vain. Famine may be the great conqueror and 
the war may end in a surrender forced by starva- 
tion. 

"While hotels and restaurants are heavy of- 
fenders in the matter of wasting food, yet the chief 
contribution to the $700,000,000 food loss is made 
in the kitchens of private homes. Good food is 
improperly handled and stored. It is carelessly 
cooked. It is wastefully prepared. It is over- 
generously provided. These are the chief causes 
of home food waste. 

"Extravagant cooks must learn how to use left- 
overs. Left-over cereals can be combined with 
meats, fruits, or vegetables to make appetizing side 
dishes. Even a spoonful of cereal is worth saving 
as a thickener for soup or gravy. Don't throw 
away stale bread, skim milk, sour milk, scraps of 
meat or fish, trimmed fats or suet. Even the water 
used for cooking rice and many vegetables should 
be kept. Stale bread can be used in many ways, 
skim milk contains all the nourishing qualities of 



26 THE CHRISTIAlSr IN WAK TIME 

milk except fat ; sour milk can be used in baking ; 
meat and fish scraps add flavor and nourishment 
to made-over dishes ; fat can be tried out and used 
as a substitute for butter and lard in cooking; 
while cooking water will help to flavor soups and 
sauces." 

We all of us eat too much anyhow — eat twice 
as much food as we need for proper nourishment 
and eat many expensive foods that do not nourish 
us as much as cheaper kinds would. We have 
been living to eat, let us now eat to live. It 
will save millions of dollars. In the big cities 
thousands of people pay several dollars for a lunch 
or dinner in a restaurant. Enough money is spent 
in New York restaurants in one evening to keep 
the spenders healthfully alive for a week. This is 
wicked at such a time of crisis. Every man should 
spend just enough for the plain, nourishing food 
that he needs in order to do the best work. Thou- 
sands of dollars could be saved here and many 
more thousands of pounds of food could be pre- 
served for the world. Luxury in food is a sin at 
this time. 

Millions of dollars are being spent in drink. It 
is a waste at any time to spend money for that 
which does no one any good and works harm to 
thousands. Let every Christian labor to have these 
vast sums of money turned into helpful channels. 
If all the money put into drink this year were put 
into "Liberty Bonds," the two billions would be 



THE CHEISTIA:N' m war time 2Y 

floated easily — and more billions besides. In ad- 
dition to this millions of bushels of grain are being 
used to distill liquors. Every Christian should 
insist that this grain be used for food. 

Millions of dollars are being spent for tobacco. 
Whether a Christian should smoke or not is a mat- 
ter for him to settle with his own conscience. But 
at this time when so many are starving in the 
world, and our own nation is perhaps entering 
upon grave perils, it is criminal to waste millions 
of dollars upon expensive cigars and innumerable 
cigarettes. If we must smoke, let us as a nation 
reduce it to a minimum and be content with most 
moderate indulgence. 

Christian women also have a great opportunity 
to save millions to the nation by dressing in inex- 
pensive clothes and hats. I looked into a shop 
window not long ago where about twenty hats were 
upon exhibition. These hats averaged twenty dol- 
lars each. I saw another window where gowns 
costing hundreds of dollars each were on exhibi- 
tion. I am not an expert on either hats or gowns, 
but I do happen to know that some conscientious 
women are managing to look exceedingly attractive 
with hats and dresses costing only a fraction of 
what these hats and gowns were marked, and they 
are very happy in the consciousness of employing 
the large sums previously spent upon clothes to 
serve their country at this time. 

Einally it is the duty of every Christian to 



28 THE CHRISTIAN" IN WAE TIME 

bend all his energies to increasing the food supply 
of the nation. How serious the crisis is, how nec- 
essary this service is, has been stated by the 
President himself. Remember his words : 

"We must supply abundant food not only for 
ourselves and for our armies and our seamen, but 
also for a large part of the nations with whom we 
have now made common cause, and in whose sup- 
port and by whose sides we shall be fighting. . . . 

"Let me suggest, also, that every one who creates 
or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to 
solve the problem of the feeding of the nations." 

Every patch of ground should be utilized. Every 
spare hour should be put into cultivating it, if 
we have it. Let us get our exercise in gardening, 
exchanging our golf stick for a hoe. Set the 
children to gardening. Many of them will be quite 
delighted at cultivating a little patch of ground 
they can call their own. Let us save all the foods 
nature herself provides. Every apple, every 
grape in the woods, every berry in the fields, should 
be gathered, and what is not immediately con- 
sumed should be canned for winter use. Let those 
who live by sea and lake choose fishing for a pas- 
time and save the meat bill and the meat for two 
days a week. Gather the dandelions from the 
lawn, the mushrooms from the pastures, the water- 
cress from the river. Let us make the earth yield 
double this year what it has ever yielded before. 
The following words from Mr. Charles Lathrop 



THE CHRISTIAl!^ IN WAR TIME 29 

Pack, President of the ISTational Emergency Food 
Garden Commission, mentioned above, should be 
read and heeded by everybody: 

"War has now made the planting of food gar- 
dens an imperative obligation upon every Ameri- 
can citizen who has access to land, no matter how 
restricted the area. The man, woman, or child who 
allows any soil fertility or available labor to go to 
waste this year deserves the opprobrium that goes 
to the military slacker. We are perhaps approach- 
ing the time when we must adopt meatless days 
either voluntarily or by government fiat. Let us 
see to it that the food substitutes for meat are 
produced independently of the farms by a great 
host of home gardeners. Because it is late in the 
season, do not neglect to plant a garden for that 
reason." (l./f'^ 



WHEN a nation is at war the resources are 
so heavily taxed for the prosecution of 
the war itself that every form of Chris- 
tian activity is likely to suffer. At the same time 
taxes and prices become so high that those who 
have money begin to conserve it, fearing for the 
future. There are new and large demands for 
money, such as we have just witnessed in the call 
for two billion dollars for "Liberty Bonds," and 
one hundred million for Ked Cross work attendant 
upon our entering the war. The first institutions 
to feel these new demands, with their deflexion of 
funds, are home and foreign missions, various 
reform societies, philanthropic and charitable or- 
ganizations and war relief for Europe. And yet 
the continuation of all this work at its highest 
pitch of efficiency is more necessary than ever 
now that we are in the war, and its relaxation will 
work indescribable hardships upon many. 

Here then is a great opportunity for the Chris- 
tian. He must see that these various causes of 
Christ do not suifer. The multitudes will forget 
almost everything except the prosecution of the 
war. It will remain for the faithful few, the 
real Christians in the community, to see to the 

30 



THE CHKISTIA^.IK WAE TIME 31^ 

contimiation of these otlier activities. Indeed it 
would be a poor compensation to win this war 
against Germany and to let ignorance, crime, vice, 
poverty conquer us at home and to lose the great 
gains for the kingdom of God that we have made 
in foreign lands. Let us begin with the cause of 
missions. Germany has practically had to aban- 
don all her splendid foreign missions. England 
has had a great struggle and just saved the Cal- 
cutta mission at the last moment. The English 
people are rallying splendidly and missionary 
contributions are coming in, in spite of the tre- 
mendous sacrifices the English people are required 
to make. Our American missions are the pride 
of the American church. They are scattered all 
over Asia, South America, Africa and the islands 
of the Pacific. They are our imperial outposts. 
They are large and splendidly manned, they have 
colleges, technical schools, medical schools, divinity 
schools, boys' and girls' schools, and hospitals 
connected with them that measure up to the finest 
institutions here at home. They are the outposts 
of the finest civilization America knows and they 
are the heralds of the American type of Christian- 
ity. To have them crippled at this time would 
bring an unspeakable calamity to the kingdom of 
God, an irreparable loss to civilization, hardly to 
be offset by any gains for democracy which this 
war might bring, and yet it will not be long before 
we shall be hearing from our Foreign Missionary 



32 THE CHEISTIAI^ IN WAK TIME 

boards that receipts are falling off because of the 
war. The same thing will of course apply to the 
Home Missions work. What a pity it would be, 
if the transforming work our churches are doing 
for the immigrants in our great cities and for the 
negroes throughout the South, should be curtailed 
by lack of funds. What superb schools and col- 
leges — Tuskegee, Hampton, Atlanta, Fisk, Car- 
lisle, Talladega, to mention only a few — would 
have to be closed. What a loss! We should be 
l^y']^, losing one war while winning another. Every 
pastor should at this particular time present the 
importance of missions with tenfold greater em- 
phasis than ever before. Some pastors are now 
saying: "Everything must give place to the win- 
ning of this war." This is a great mistake, as they 
tell us from England. There they have discovered 
that in order to win the war it was necessary to 
sustain church life and home life at the highest 
level, that it has not paid to take money from the 
Christian institutions at home, even to prosecute 
the war abroad. Our pastors might well show 
their people that, if this war is to issue in the 
establishment of world-wide democracy, it is of 
inestimable advantage to have great colleges like 
Roberts College and the American Girls' College 
at Constantinople and the Protestant College at 
Beirut; to have our mission stations, all of which 
are real protagonists of democracy, in every state 
in Christendom. So let us support our mission- 



\ v<^ 



THE CHEISTIAK m WAR TIME 33 

ary work at all hazards. Let us not only support ^.-pf^ 

our own, but let us help England and France sus- ; . . .^>('^''^ 

tain theirs until the pressure is over. And since 

we cannot, I suppose, have dealings with German 

missionaries while the war is on, we might at least 

try to hold what they have achieved and minister 

to the people they have won until in due time they 

can resume their shattered work. This is already 

being done to some extent, I understand. But this 

is the one time of all others when missions should 

be prosecuted with renewed passion and extensive- 

ness. Give your liberty bonds to the missionary 

societies. 

Another sphere of activity where the stress of 
war is being felt with most pitiable, heart-break- 
ing results, is in the relief work for the starving 
peoples of Europe. I happen to be treasurer of 
one of the Relief Eunds and I am intimately con- 
nected with the American Committee for Ar- 
menian and Syrian Eelief. I suppose our friends 
sometimes get impatient at our importunity. But 
if they could see the letters and the daily cable- 
grams from the American Consuls and missionaries 
in Turkey and the Caucasus, and the telegrams 
from Mr. Lansing at Washington, their hearts 
would melt. They would see why we are con- 
strained to ask again and again. Before the war 
came to America we were doing fairly well with 
the Armenian and Syrian refugees, and this coun- 
try was doing well for Belgium and France; the 



34 THE CHEISTIAI^ IK WAR TIME 

contributions for the Armenians are beginning to 
fall off since the United States entered the war, I 
think that American Christians do not really know 
what that means. If they did they would not per- 
mit it. It means that thousands of little children 
and women are literally lying on the roadsides 
slowly dying of starvation and cold. INot even a 
root can be found now, or the bark of trees ; not a 
rag to add to tattered garments. (Read Lord 
Bryce's account of conditions as he recently found 
them in Armenia, and the cablegrams from the 
American Consul at Tiflis to Secretary Lansing.) 
This is what it will mean to hundreds of thou- 
sands if we withhold our gifts. Again, let me say 
that I believe that, could the American people 
really know the conditions of these starving people, 
there is not one who would not send something. 
At least every Christian should consider it his 
duty during this war time to give something and 
by his efforts to see that these relief funds do not 
suffer. 

Other organizations that are going to suffer 
greatly if Christians do not rally to their support 
are those which have been engaged in "driving 
the evil thing out of the city." We refer to such 
bodies as the Child Labor, the Prison Reform, the 
Anti-Vice, the Anti-Saloon organizations; the so- 
cieties fighting diseases, bad housing, exploitation 
of girls; the various religious bodies doing such 
fine work for our cities, such as the Young Men's 



THE CHKISTIAN IN WAK TIME 35 

Christian Association, and the City Federations 
of Churches; the Vacation Bible Schools for the 
summer and all the organizations sending children 
into the country for the summer ; the philanthropic 
and charitable organizations. These are only a 
few out of hundreds. The tendency in times of 
financial stringency is to cut down on these local 
charities. Already a warning has been sounded 
in ISTew York in an editorial in the Evening 
Post of June 2nd, where reference is made to the 
falling off of receipts in the Charity Organization 
Society and the consequent suffering of certain 
families. Along all these lines the Christian has 
a great opportunity. He can increase his own 
contributions, he can show to his comrades that the 
keeping up of the work of these various institu- 
tions is just as essential to the real welfare and 
defense of the nation as is actual military service. 
What a calamity to our nation, if we let vice be- 
come rampant through neglect of our Y. M. C. A.'s 
and such institutions as provide homes for the 
young men and women of our cities ; if we let our 
prisons become crime-breeding pits again; if we 
let the exploiters of women and children repeal 
all the excellent laws which, after years of con- 
tention, we have secured for their protection. Even 
now a group of selfish men, taking war as an ex- 
cuse, are trying to have the child-labor laws re- 
pealed in Albany. And this war will increase the 
poverty in our great cities. It will make many 



36 THE CHRISTIAN IN WAR TIME 

dependent families. Anyone wlio at this time cuts 
off his subscriptions to charity, except under direct 
necessity, is hurting his country. Neither can 
any nation be at its best when vice and greed are 
left unrestrained. The most encouraging signs 
of a new ideal of home defense yet manifested by 
our government are the rulings forbidding anyone 
to serve liquor to soldiers and sailors, and the 
determination to provide clean and helpful sur- 
roundings for the camps. It is the duty of the 
Christian to support at this juncture every or- 
ganization which is striving to do this same thing 
for the whole city. So shall he serve his country 
most effectively. 



VI 



FOR two years now tlie American papers 
liave been full of tlie "shame" and "dis- 
grace" of Germany because of the way 
sbe treated Englisbmen wbo Happened to be living 
in Germany when the war broke out. It should be 
the duty of every Christian in America to see that 
no slightest stigma of this sort is ever attached to 
this country. There are thousands of German sub- 
jects here and they deserve the kindliest treatment 
at our hands. They had nothing to do with bring- 
ing on the war originally and they had nothing to 
do with bringing America into the war. Many of 
them have lived here so long that their sympathies 
are with America rather than with the fatherland. 
But they have ties with Germany that make their 
whole experience very sad and trying. They 
should receive our sympathy and help rather than 
our enmity. It is a splendid chance to practice the 
golden rule and show what real Christianity is. 
Even if Germany should treat Americans in Ger- 
many in an un-Christian manner let us still be 
Christians. The English people have just shown 
a remarkable example in this regard. Germany 
has been treating English sailors most barbarously, 
shelling and sinking row-boats after the sailors 

37 



38 THE CHEISTIA^ m WAK TIME 

have left torpedoed ships, and sinking hospital 
ships, dropping bombs on women and children, 
actions condemned by all law, humane sentiment, 
and practice. There have been reports of harsh 
treatment of prisoners. It was natural that the 
English should have been stirred to reprisals. Yet 
in a debate in Parliament, only three men in the 
whole British Parliament stood for . reprisals in 
kind. The discussion was headed by the arch- 
bishop, who took a most noble Christian stand. 
If England, smarting under the greatest outrages 
any war of centuries has witnessed, can take such 
a stand, surely we in America, with no such ir- 
ritations, can refrain from any ill-treatment, in 
either word or deed, of Germans, who are our 
enemies only in name. So far we have been quite 
exemplary in this regard. Two weeks after the 
war had opened a German singer was called before 
the curtain of the Metropolitan Opera House a 
dozen times at her farewell appearance. No one 
worried whether she was German or not. Perhaps 
the ovation was greater because she was, and the 
three thousand Americans wished to give evidence 
of their kindly feeling and sympathy. This was as 
it should be. So far as 'New York is concerned, 
I have noticed no ill feeling whatever toward Ger- 
mans who behave themselves. Only the other day 
a German, who has one of the most prominent 
stores on Fifth Avenue, told me that he had not re- 
ceived one insult since the war opened, or been 



THE CHKISTIAK IN WAK TIME 39 

boycotted by a single cTistomer. Let all this go 
on and let us who are really Christian go still fur- 
ther and go out of our way to show sympathy and 
kindliness toward these people. We ought to do 
this all the more easily, since the government at 
Washington has publicly expressed its satisfaction 
that among all these thousands of Germans only 
a mere handful — about one hundred and forty in 
the whole nation — ^have been interned for doubtful 
conduct or for practicing machinations against this 
government. And some of these were spies who 
had been sent here by Germany long before Amer- 
ica entered the war. 

The fact that there are several millions of Ger- 
man Americans in this country also affords a 
splendid opportunity for the practice of Christian 
helpfulness. They are American citizens and 
very good ones on the whole. They are splen- 
didly loyal at this time. They have volunteered 
with others. They will let themselves be drafted 
without protest. But if they evince sadness 
in their hearts over America being dragged into 
the war, let us be charitable toward them. They 
are in a position of great hardship. Thousands 
of them have relatives in the German army, some 
even have brothers. It is not easy to go forth, 
perhaps to shoot one's own brother or uncle. One 
of these men remarked recently that he was a good 
American and should do his duty as an American, 
but that he may be called upon to kill his own 



40 THE CHKISTIAN m WAK TIME 

brother. Such men deserve our most kindly sym- 
pathy and our pity. They are torn between con- 
flicting emotions and their loyalty to America is 
praiseworthy beyond characterization under the 
circumstances and all Christians should recog- 
nize it. 

Of one other thing I should like to speak here. 
There is now the greatest opportunity the Christian 
has had since the Civil War to show his faith in 
prayer. I find, from a very large correspondence, 
that there are many Christians who believe the 
United States is fighting the Lord's battle, is fight- 
ing to save the world to real Christianity, and they 
can pray for victory for American arms. I find, 
on the other hand, a great number whose idea of 
God and whose consciences will not let them ask 
God's blessing on the arms of the nation, nor 
beseech him to grant victory to our troops. Each 
Christian will have to decide these things for him- 
self. But there are some things on which all 
Christians can unite in fervid and unceasing 
prayer at this time. Some of these have been set 
forth in the letter to the churches issued by The 
Federal Council of Churches at its recent meeting 
in Washington; some have received emphasis in 
the President's letter to the Kussians ; some I will 
suggest at this time. But for all these things the 
Christian should pray unceasingly : 

1. That this war may issue in some new inter- 
national political order that shall make wars un- 



THE CHKISTIAN IN WAR TIME 41 

necessary and impossible forever. The President 
of tlie United States lias splendidly put this object 
of prayer in the following words : 

"And then the free peoples of the world must 
draw together in some common covenant, some 
genuine and practical co-operation that will in ef- 
fect combine their force to secure peace and justice 
in the dealings of nations with one another. The 
brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair 
but empty phrase; it must be given a structure 
of force and reality. The nations must realize 
their common life and effect a workable partner- 
ship to secure that life against the aggressions of 
autocratic and self -pleasing power." 

2. That the world may be "made safe for de- 
mocracy" by this war. Only in the achievement of 
some sort of League of ISTations guaranteeing per- 
petual peace and of world-wide democracy can man 
ever be reconciled to the terrible price this war is 
costing the world. Was not Dr. William S. Rains- 
ford right when he recently said: "The gospel of 
Jesus Christ and democracy go together, for the 
gospel is that all men are God's children and all 
men are brothers." If all men are children of 
God and brothers then no one man has the right to 
say how all men shall live. 

3. That we keep our own hearts clear of all 
arrogance and selfishness and that our nation "seek 
no material profit or aggrandizement of any kind ; 
that she seek no advantage or selfish object of her 



,cA ^^ 



42 THE CHEISTIA:N" IN WAE TIME 

own, but fight for the liberation of peoples every- 
where from the aggressions of autocratic force" ; 
that our own nation may be kept true to its pro- 
fessed aims of justice, liberty and brotherhood. 

4. That we "testify to our fellow-Christians in 
every land, most of all to those from whom we are 
estranged, our consciousness of unbroken unity 
in Christ." 

5. That "our Christian institutions and activi- 
ties may be maintained unimpaired, that the soul 
of our nation may be nourished and renewed 
through the worship and service of almighty God." 

6. That "men everywhere may rise to new 
obedience to the will of our Father God, who, in 
Christ, has given himself in supreme self-sacrifice 
for the redemption of the world, and who invites 
us to share with him his ministry of reconcilia- 
tion." 

Y. That men and nations may learn out of the 
travail of this war the futility of force to accom- 
plish lasting good, and that self-seeking ends only 
in disaster, that the nation which seeks only its 
own life shall lose it, that "not by might but by 
my spirit" is true national good to be achieved." 



YII 

THEEE are some who are saying that this is 
no time to be talking of the world after 
the war; all our energies should now be 
applied to winning this war. After it has been 
won, then we will turn our thoughts to the new 
humanity, the new interpretation and application 
of Christianity, the new political and international 
order. 

There could be no greater mistake than this. 
It is when the disaster is upon the world that the 
prophets should be preaching the new era. We 
had an illuminating instance of this last summer. 
It was when infantile paralysis was working its 
cruel havoc among our children that the doctors 
and the scientists set themselves to studying 
methods of safeguarding the country from its re- 
currence in this present summer. It is now 
while the war is upon us that every Christian 
should be devoting himself to the endeavor to 
find other ways of settling international disputes 
than by war, and should be asking whether some 
way can not be found of extending the principles 
of Christianity to the nations, whether the brother- 
hood of man taught by Jesus and all the apostles 
is not a possibility, whether the spirit of Chris- 

43 



44 THE CHKISTIAI^r IN WAE TIME 

tian cooperation and goodwill might not be made 
to pervade tlie relationships of nations and races. 
I sincerely believe that if any Christian would be- 
gin at once to preach the two messages which the 
prophetic-minded people of all nations are begin- 
ning to see and emphasize as a result of this war, 
the world would soon be ready to take a step to- 
ward lasting peace. These two messages should 
be so integral a part of the faith of any Christian 
that, when the peace conference convenes to adjust 
the claims of the nations and to devise the terms 
of peace, their action will, to a large extent, be 
determined by this universal Christian conscience. 

One of the messages is religious and has to do 
with the extension of Christianity to international 
affairs ; the other is political and has to do with the 
extension of national organization to world organi- 
zation. It is of the first that I would say a word 
here. 

The present world war was rendered possible 
largely by the fact that, while the relationships 
of individuals to each other and of the states in 
the various nations to each other have become 
practically Christian, those of nation to nation 
still remain pagan. We have been living under a 
double standard of ethics, one for individuals, 
another for groups; one for persons, another for 
nations ; one the Christian standard, the other the 
pagan. This becomes painfully clear the moment 
one contrasts the plane on which men live in their 



THE CHRISTIAlSr IK WAR TIME 45 

relationships one to another and that on which 
nations live. It is not only wrong from the 
point of view of the Christian ethic for one man 
to steal from another; it is a crime, punishable 
under the laws of the state. But in the past we 
have praised that nation most which could steal 
the most; we have called it imperial. Our great 
empires have been largely built up by stealing. It 
is wrong, it is a crime for one man to kill another, 
but whoever heard, until quite recently, of a nation 
being criticised or condemned for going out and 
ruthlessly destroying another nation? Read the 
contemporary lives of IlTapoleon and see the 
admiration of the historians for his wholesale mur- 
der of nations. Christians long ago ceased to 
settle their difficulties with pistols, knives and 
fists, but let a quarrel arise between two nations 
and they settle it with guns and battleships. The 
first thought of an individual in case of dispute 
is: "To court." The first thought of a nation is: 
"To arms." Christians forgive each other. Who 
would not laugh at the man who suggested that 
nations should forgive each other ? The great mdn 
according to Christian thinking is he who serves 
and gives the most. The great nation is the one 
that can dominate, can command the service of 
other nations, can get the most. Christians do not 
live by a doctrine of rigMs but by a doctrine of 
duties. E'ations know no doctrine except that 
based upon rights. 



46 THE CHRISTIAlSr IN WAR TIME 

It is almost as tlioiigli there were two decalogues, 
two sets of commandments, in existence, one for 
men, one for nations. It will never be possible to 
get war out of the world while this double stand- 
ard, this contradictory ethic, remains in the world. 
There can be no peace until all the kingdoms of 
this world, all the spheres of human relationships, 
have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
Christ. The one thing every Christian should 
now be urging unceasingly is that the Christian 
ethic be extended to cover the relationships of 
nations, as it has all the other conditions of human 
life. It must be driven home to the conscience of 
all men, everywhere, that it can not be wrong 
for a man to steal, and right for a nation; that it 
can not be wrong for a man to destroy his fellow 
man, and right for a nation to destroy its fellow 
nation ; that it can not be wrong for men to settle 
their disputes with guns, and right for nations to 
do this. It must be made a sort of universal sense 
in men that the same test of greatness and good- 
ness applies to nations as to men. There ought 
to be the same unwritten law of honor in the hearts 
of governments that exists in the hearts of Chris- 
tian men, namely, that duty, opportunity, is a 
higher law of life than is the law of rights, and 
that if rights must be defended this will never be 
at the cost of the innocent. (This would practi- 
cally prevent any nation waging war against 
another, for with the present closely knit fabric 



THE CHEISTIAlsT IIST WAK TIME 4Y 

of civilization, all tlie world is one family, and no 
nation can wage war against another without wag- 
ing war against all humanity.) Christian brother- 
hood must be extended beyond national bonnda- 
lies; otherwise it is not Christian, only national. 
Christianity is national now in some countries; 
it can never be anything but international. It is 
for the world or for nobody. So, too, if nations 
are not brought under its sway, individuals will 
not stay there permanently. One standard of 
ethics in the Kingdom of God should be on every 
Christian's lips at this time, night and day. 

Two words of encouragement should be added. 
The first is this, that such an advance in the ap- 
plication of Christianity is not as impossible as 
it may seem. It is but the final stage in an 
evolutionary process which points to this fulfill- 
ment. The relationships of men were once as 
pagan as are those of nations. Our ancestors once 
settled all their disputes the way nations do now, 
with knife, sword, gun, with tooth and claw. They 
once lived by stealing, and killed each other on 
the slightest provocation. One has only to read 
the romances of Scott or of Dumas to get a pic- 
ture of individual relationships on a war basis. 
But men have progressed far beyond this and now 
live, in general, according to the Christian rule. 
The other is that the states of the United States 
once had separate armies and were ready to go to 
war with one another. They established a court 



48 THE CHKISTIAN" IE" WAE TIME 

at Washington and now live under the Christian 
rule. The nations had already taken great steps 
in this same direction, having framed arbitration 
treaties and held Hague Conferences and voted in 
favor of a World Court. Had not one revengeful 
nation inflicted this war on Europe the evolution 
would probably have gone on and we might have 
found the nations in a third Hague Conference 
at this time actually establishing this Court. But 
there is encouragement in all this, and it is that 
this truth is everywhere dawning on the world. 
During the last two years I have followed the ser- 
mons, articles and books of England and America 
very carefully. In all of these I find this new 
conception of the gospel constantly and increas- 
ingly appearing. I wish every minister in the 
United States would preach it over and over again. 



VIII 

PREVIOUSLY I referred to the new gospel 
or rather the enlarged, the more extended 
gospel in which the Christian should in- 
terest himself and which he should preach until it 
becomes the habit of men's minds to talk in terms 
of moral methods of the settlement of international 
disputes, that these might supplant the methods 
of war between nations as they have already elim- 
inated war between individuals. !N"ow I wish to 
impress upon the Christian the duty of devoting 
his time to the study of those international in- 
stitutions which are being carefully considered by 
many in Great Britain, France and America at 
this time, and are being proposed as substitutes 
for war, and especially should he acquaint himself 
with the proposals everywhere being discussed 
looking toward some form of federation of the 
nations, which shall make for peace, security, jus- 
tice and mutual cooperation. There is a very 
widespread feeling in both America and Europe 
that there has got to be a new world order after 
this war. ITobody, except a few war-lords, want 
this thing to occur again. The futility of war as a 
means to settle anything is coming over the world, 
as well as its wickedness and its cost in pain, sor- 
row, life and money. There is a growing feeling 

49 



50 THE CHRISTIAN IN WAR TIME 

that there is no need of it. There is a growing 
feeling that there must be some better way. JSTever 
before was this feeling so general, and never was 
there a more sympathetic hearing in Europe for 
suggestions of machinery that may serve this bet- 
ter way. There is not a little possibility that the 
institution of some form of new international or- 
ganization may take up a considerable part of the 
discussion in the final peace conference. It is very 
significant that the French Government, in issuing 
its statement recently as to terms of peace, ended 
it by saying that the guarantee of peace furnished 
by a League of Nations might be a part of the 
terms of peace. These new instruments of peace 
should be so carefully studied now, so thoroughly 
worked out and completed, and known to the peo- 
ple, that they will be ready to be offered to the 
peace conference the moment the war ceases, with 
the tremendous approval of the whole Christian 
world behind them. 

The one direction in which the minds of most 
thoughtful men seem to be turning, the one hope 
they see of establishing and maintaining peace, is 
through a League of Nations, the members of 
which shall pledge themselves to submit all justici- 
able disputes to a World Court, all questions that 
cannot be carried into a Court to a Council of 
Conciliation, and shall combine to prevent any 
nation which suddenly develops criminal tenden- 
cies from disturbing the peace of the world. 



THE CHRISTIAlSr IN WAR TIME 51 

It has been very interesting to note what great 
strides this idea has made since the opening of the 
war. It is not a new idea. It was dreamed of 
by some in the past centuries. It was revived, but 
in such definite form that it was practically new, 
by Andrew Carnegie in his great Eectoral Ad- 
dress at St. Andrews, entitled, "A League of 
Peace." Its present great impetus so far as this 
country is concerned grew out of the meeting of 
a little group of men for a monthly dinner at the 
Century Club, New York City. As a result of 
these dinner meetings a Conference was called at 
Independence Hall, and the League to Enforce 
Peace was formed, with Mr. Taft as President. 
It stands for the principles enunciated above and 
goes somewhat further, for it plans to use economic 
pressure or the joint armies and navies of the 
nations in the League against any nations willfully 
breaking the peace. Some have remained outside 
the League to Enforce Peace because of this last 
article in its platform. But that does not hinder 
every Christian from giving it careful study, and 
if he cannot adopt this plank in the platform, at 
least let him preach the great idea of a League 
of Nations pledged to use a World Court for set- 
tlement of disputes now put to the arbitrament 
of war. The question of sanction will have to be 
decided by the League itself when it shall be 
formed. 

It is also interesting to note that at the same 



vi^ 



52 THE CHRISTIAN I:N" WAR TIME 

■ time when the Americans were studying the gen- 

eral idea and were trying to formulate it, a group 
of men in England were independently studying 
the same plan — such men as Lord Bryce, G. Lowes 
, . Dickinson, John A. Hobson, and H. IST. Brails- 

Tv/ ^,. '\^,f/^ ford. These men issued a pamphlet which, when 
compared with the results of the work of the 
American Committee, showed remarkable similar- 
ity. During the last year such men as Asquith, 
Lord Balfour, and Earl Grey, have urged the idea 
upon Europe. Indeed Mr. Asquith has recently 
said: 

"The idea of public right means or it ought to 
mean, perhaps, by a slow and gradual process, the 
substitution for force, for the clash of competing 
ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a pre- 
carious equipoise — the substitution for all of these 
of a real European partnership based on the recog- 
nition of equal rights, and established and enforced 
by the common will. A year ago that would have 
sounded like a Utopian idea. It is probably one 
that may not or will not be realized either to-day 
or to-morrow, but if and when this war is decided 
in favor of the allies it will at once come within 
the range and before long within the grasp of 
European statesmanship." 

In England a League of !N"ations Society has 
been started and is drawing to itself many of the 
leading minds of the nation. At a recent mass 
meeting held in London over a thousand men en- 



THE CHKISTIAIT IN WAE TIME 53 

dorsed Lord Bryce's proposal of a League of 
Peace in whicli the nations should unite after this 
war. In France some of the best men are giving 
it their attention. ISTever before were so many 
men in all the world thinking of some such federa- 
tion of the world as now. Six books have already 
been written upon it,* and The World Alliance 
for Promoting International Friendship through 
the Churches is asking the Churches to study the 
proposal. Here is a wonderful opportunity for 
any Christian to prepare himself to help the world 
on toward the peaceful world of Jesus, the happy 
Kingdom of God. Twelve nations are now in a 
League for making war, the United States being 
one of them. Might they not, after the war ends, 
remain in a League for making peace, inviting 
Germany and Austria to join? Christians, think 
earnestly upon these things. 

* Towards International Government, by John A. Hobson, pub- 
lished by The Macmillan Co., N. Y.; Enforced Peace, Report 
of the Proceedings of the League to Enforce Peace, published by 
the League; A League to Enforce Peace, by Robert W. Goldsmith, 
published by The Macmillan Co., N. Y.; Towards an Enduring 
Peace, compiled by Randolph S. Bourne, published by Am. Ass'n 
for Internat'l Conciliation, N. Y. ; A League of Nations, by Henry 
Noel Brailsford, published by Headley Bros., London; The Ameri- 
can League to Enforce Peace, by C. R. Ashbee, published by 
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London. 



WHAT CAN CHRISTIANS DO IN WAR 
TIME? 

By Rev. Chaeles E. Jeffeeson, D.D., LL.D. 

WHAT can Christians do in time of war? 
Live their religion. It is wise to do 
this at all times, but it is doubly im- 
perative in the day of battle. We must now prac- 
tice more assiduously than ever the fundamental 
virtues of our faith, mercy, brotherliness and 
kindness toward the stranger within our gates — 
the German, the Austrian, the Hungarian. They 
are lonely and they need our sympathy. They 
are by some distrusted, suspected, disliked, and 
we must show our confidence in them and our 
goodwill. The great mass of our foreign popula- 
tion will be loyal straight through the war, and 
every German should be assumed to be faithful to 
our flag until he has given indisputable proof to 
the contrary. 

A second thing all Christians can do is to take 
heed to our ways that we sin not with our tongue. 
These are exciting times, and it is easy to say 
things which had best be left unsaid. We must 
be patient with one another. A thousand vexing 
and tangled questions will come up for discussion, 

54 



THE CHKISTIAI^ IN WAR TIME 55 

and all of us cannot possibly think alike. The 
only sensible thing for us is to do our own 
thinking, and let everybody else do his, without 
our pouncing on him and cudgeling him because 
he does not happen to agree with us. Blessed is 
the man who gets through this war without need- 
lessly wounding acquaintances and friends by the 
cruel strokes of an unruly tongue. There will be 
enough wreckage at the end of the war without our 
adding to it a mass of ruined friendships. Let 
us do our utmost to maintain a cordial fellowship 
with our fellow Christians whose opinions are 
farthest from our own, and by our extraordinary 
self-control, refrain from saying things of which 
we shall be ashamed when the world is calm again. 
The world is torn by many demons, and we cannot 
afford to increase the fever and distraction by our 
impatient temper or our bitter tongue. 

Furthermore we can keep our heart from be- 
coming a nest filled with ugly and hateful feel- 
ings toward Germany. Before this war began, 
we Americans felt we knew the German people, 
and they held a warm place in our heart. We had 
excellent opportunities for getting acquainted 
with them. Some of us have lived in Germany, 
others have been educated there, multitudes have 
traveled through it from one end to the other. And 
our contact with the Germans caused us to love 
them, and to love their country also. We found 
them to be very rational, kind-hearted and lova- 



66 THE CHKISTIAN IN WAE TIME 

ble. Now it is incredible that any people of 
65,000,000 should overnight degenerate into a 
nation of imbeciles and barbarians. The Ger- 
mans are still what they have been ever since we 
came to know them. If we could travel through 
Germany to-day we should find the people as sensi- 
ble and kind-hearted as ever. They are still 
clothed and in their right mind. The reason they 
seem to some of us almost demented and demo- 
niacal is because for nearly three years we have 
been fed on the bad things which bad Germans 
have done, and have been kept in ignorance of 
the good things which good Germans have done. 
We have been industriously supplied with the 
foolish things which foolish Germans have said, 
and have been meagerly informed of the sensible 
things which sensible Germans have said. It 
makes a vast difference in one's estimate of a 
country whether he hears only good things or bad. 
Many of us had, before the war, an unfavorable 
opinion of France, and the chief reason was that 
the wire across the Atlantic was a sewer through 
which the filth of French scandal and gossip was 
constantly flowing. For three years we have been 
told daily what is good in the French people, and 
our estimate has been amazingly changed. Russia 
also was low down in our esteem, because the worst 
things done in Russia were constantly exploited 
in our papers. As soon as the war opened, another 
Russia was presented, and the attitude of our heart 



THE CHEISTIAK IK WAK TIME 57 

was gradually altered. The newspapers can 
glorify or blacken what nation they will. There 
are thousands of intelligent Europeans who look 
upon the United States as a nation of semi-bar- 
barians, because the chief things reported to them 
about us have been our lynchings, our divorces, 
and the tricks of our high financiers. All that 
they have heard is true, but they have not heard 
enough. By hearing more they would revise their 
judgment of us. At the beginning of the war, the 
German cable was cut, and from that day to this 
we have been fed daily on stuff which has come 
to us through a wire which belongs to Germany's 
foe. Isfearly e' ' (^ :ratiaii|^v^5tie 

Ijgen «ti"(r . ■■. . lU, ubIv bad thiijgs as a^'ruie hav*^ 
been aE*^;^' I ^j s.^iue through. We have not been 
allowed to miss a syllable which an insolent fire- 
eater like Count Keventlow has said, and have 
been denied the privilege of hearing the things 
said by other Germans who dislike the surly 
Count as much as we dislike him ourselves. Day 
and night since August 1st, 1914, we have had 
sounded in our ears the names of three mighty 
Germans as though there were no others — Treit- 
scke and Nietzsche, and Bernhardi — one a deaf, 
cross-grained curmudgeon obsessed with a dislike 
for Great Britain, the second a lunatic, and the 
third a fanatic. Most of us had never heard of any 
one of them before the war, nor had the majority 
of Germans. Three fools can be picked out of any 



58 THE CHRISTIAN" IN WAR TIME 

nation, even tke United States. Three Frencli or 
Russian or English books can be found containing 
as dangerous doctrine as anything to be found in 
Treitschke or Nietzsche or Bernhardi. It is absurd 
to hold a great people responsible for the false 
philosophy of a handful of radical or eccentric 
writers. We have been surfeited with thrilling 
pictures of a hideous monster called Prussian mili- 
tarism. German militarism has existed for many 
years, and it never seriously disturbed us before. 
We rather liked it. It was picturesque and it was 
even fascinating. We liked to see the great pa- 
rades in Berlin, and to read of the autumn ma- 
neuvers, and we were fond of the Kaiser, especially 
in his army overcoat. Some of us doted on the 
Prussian way of doing things, and regretted that 
our Republic did not enjoy the ennobling disci- 
pline of universal military service. But for three 
years Prussian militarism has been painted alto- 
gether black. This has made a difference in our 
feelings. 

German soldiers have no doubt done monstrous 
things, but they have been done for the most part 
by order of their superior officers. "Theirs not to 
make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to 
do and die." That sentiment was written by a 
Britisher, and has been accepted the world over 
as a fine expression of a glorious principle. The 
German soldiers have merely obeyed their officers, 
and that is what soldiers in all lands are taught to 



THE CHEISTIAIT I^ WAE TIME 59 

do. Our own soldiers are expected to do as nnich. 
"But German soldiers have done horrible things 
which they were not commanded to do." Very 
true. This is inseparable from war. War itself 
is a colossal atrocity, and minor atrocities are its 
legitimate offspring. Eead the story of the Boer 
War, or of any other war, if you want a sickening 
chapter of outrages and infamies. "But the Ger- 
man people are behind the Kaiser !" So they are, 
and in all lands it is counted commendable for 
citizens in time of war to get behind their Govern- 
ment. That is exactly what we Americans are all 
trying very hard just now to do, and we convince 
ourselves it is a virtuous thing to do. Why blame 
the Germans for doing what we do ourselves? 

Our Government is not making war upon the 
German people, but upon the German autocracy 
' — chiefly the German military staff. It is this 
staff which has disgraced Germany. It has sanc- 
tioned deeds which will leave a stain on German 
history for a thousand years. It was this staff that 
ordered the invasion of Belgium. The German 
Army once in, other devilish things followed. A 
burglar once in a house in which he has no right, 
must maintain himself by perpetrating additional 
outrages. To save himself, members of the house- 
hold must be gagged or bound or knocked insensi- 
ble. So of Belgium. The German robber once in, 
all subsequent villainies became military necessi- 
ties. For none of these is there excuse. The rape 



60 THE CHEISTIAIT IN WAE TIME 

of Belgium is an outrage which humanity will 
never pardon. That is the bottom reason why the 
United States and Germany are now at war. But 
the invasion of Belgium was not ordered by the 
German people. That diabolism is the work of the 
military staff. The staff is the product of the 
doctrine of Clausewitz. Against that staff the 
United States is at war. That gang of militarists 
must be overcome. That mailed fist must be 
paralyzed. But the German people are still to-day 
what they have always been — hospitable, peace- 
loving, amiable and sensible, and such we shall 
find them when this war is ended. In the mean- 
time let us think of them often as we used to 
think of them. Let us remember their noble 
traits, their shining virtues, their loveliest graces. 
Let us pray without ceasing along with them, that 
the days of our distress and theirs may be short- 
ened, and that by the guidance of the Eternal 
Spirit their rulers and our own may alike be led 
into courses which shall establish righteousness, 
and secure a just and lasting peace. 

One of the most important bits of work for both 
church and nation is the elimination of intoxicat- 
ing drinks during the period of the war. The 
liquor traffic is a curse at all times: the havoc 
which it works is especially apparent in time of 
war. It is a costly and extravagant business at 
all times, devouring millions of tons of grain 
which ought to be converted into bread, but this 



THE CHEISTIAIT IN" WAR TIME 61 

extravagance becomes imbearable in a crisis like 
the present when the whole world faces the possi- 
bility of famine. It is a demoralizing business 
at all times, befuddling men's brains and leading 
them into vice and crime, but it is doubly demoral- 
izing in times when young men are massed in 
enormous mmibers for the purpose of carrying on 
war. Alcohol is the deadly foe of efficiency. 
Every European nation confessed this at the be- 
ginning of the war. If we are willing to learn 
from the experience of Europe, here is the place 
to begin. We pay an awful price for entering the 
war, a price which can in no way be avoided, but 
there are certain items in the expense bill which 
ought to be and can be cut out, and one of these is 
the traffic in drink. Every brewery and every dis- 
tillery in the United States ought to be closed at 
once and kept closed till the end of the war. Every 
saloon in the United States ought to be closed im- 
mediately and kept closed until the war is over. 
Stringent laws should be passed, and those who 
break them ought to be dealt with as traitors to 
their country. Give us nation-wide prohibition for 
the period of the war, and when peace is estab- 
lished the American people will consider the ques- 
tion whether the good of the nation and the wel- 
fare of mankind require that the saloons shall ever 
be reopened. We have had a fashion of looking 
down upon Eussia as a semi-civilized country, a 
people incapable of entertaining high ideals and 



62 THE CHRISTIA:^^ IK WAE TIME 

committing themselves to humanitarian causes, 
and yet in the suppression of the liquor traffic in 
the present war, Russia leads the world. Why- 
should not the new Russian Republic be encour- 
aged by our Republic taking a stand by her side ? 
Another piece of work for christian men to at- 
tend to is the safeguarding of the morals of the 
men who make up our armies. There is a vile 
and nasty side of war which is not much exploited 
in the papers, but men who are informed know 
about it, and talk about it in secret. Moral con- 
ditions in all the European belligerent countries 
are appalling. The stories which men who have 
visited the front whisper on their return of what 
they have seen and heard, are alarming and dis- 
gusting. War is the mother of all vices. They 
flourish most luxuriantly when nations fight. 
What Robert Herrick has said of the frightful 
devastations of tuberculosis and alcoholism and 
syphilis in France can be paralleled by hideous 
stories from other lands. Here are facts which 
must not be blinked. In a world like this, every 
intelligent man and woman knows what is likely 
to happen when tens of thousands of young men 
are segregated and deprived of the elevating and 
saving influences of home. There is work here 
for the christian church whose importance cannot 
be overestimated. There is work here also for our 
government to do. In these days when we think 
nothing of spending millions and even billions for 



THE CHEISTIAIST IN WAR TIME 63 

tlie things we deem essential, we should tolerate no 
parsimony in expenditures for army and navy 
cliaplains, and for all the things which chaplains 
need. What does it profit a nation to keep the 
routes of trade open, if in the doing of it the 
hearts of our young men are degraded and their 
ideals are forever overthrown? There is such a 
thing as a nation gaining the world and losing its 
soul. What boots it to conquer Prussian militar- 
ism if we pile up under our flag huge masses of 
wrecked manhood, men debauched in body, mind 
and spirit, forever incapacitated to minister to the 
moral life of the world ? Huge appropriations are 
made for ships and guns and explosives ; let huge 
appropriations be made also for defending our 
^lation against those spiritual enemies which are 
able to destroy not only the body but also the soul. 
Still another task awaits the church — the task 
of consolation. The land is filled with anxious 
hearts. Men and women are passing through ex- 
periences the like of which they have never known. 
Young men between twenty-one and thirty are 
grappling with a problem altogether new. In 
silence they are brooding, musing, questioning, 
suffering, treading the wine-press alone. Fathers 
and mothers carry a weight upon their hearts. 
There is a shadow on them which does not lift. 
They look into the future with many fears. The 
whole outlook on life has been changed by the com- 
ing of the war. It is a day of troubled hearts, and 



64 THE CHRISTIAN IN" WAR TIME 

the Spirit is saying to all our churches : "Comfort 
ye, comfort ye the people !" The church must be 
more and more a place of prayer. It must be more 
and more a seat of consolation. It must be more 
and more a home in which affection and good-fel- 
lowship and goodwill abound. When the world is 
fiUed with thunder, the church of Christ must 
minister to quietness and peace. 

A duty which christian people should not over- 
look in these distracted days is the duty of pro- 
tecting the good things which have been won at 
enormous cost. Legislation for the protection of 
children, and for the safeguarding of the rights of 
wage-earners, and for the fostering of various 
humanitarian interests, is secured with difficulty, 
and only after arduous labor and exasperating 
delays. As soon as war is declared, there is 
always a tendency to sweep away the safeguard 
of liberty, and to take advantage of the weak. 
The wage-earners are justified in resisting every 
encroachment on their rights, and ought to 
protest loudly against the imposition of laws 
which lose sight of the man in their professed 
zeal for the good of the country. Nothing is 
good for the country which impairs the physical 
and moral health of the individual man. It 
does not follow that when a nation declares war, 
the fourth commandment is immediately abro- 
gated. The laws of God abide, no matter what 
mortals think or do. Men should rest one 



THE CHRISTIAN m WAR TIME 65 

day in seven, whether the nation is at peace 
or in war. In war we must have efficiency, 
and to be efficient human beings must work no 
more than six days out of seven. Overworked men 
can never carry through a successful war. The 
wage-earners have often bitterly complained at the 
apparent indifference of the christian church to 
the injustices to which they have been subjected, 
and to the many wrongs they have been obliged 
to suffer. Here is a chance for christian men to 
show themselves friends of labor. All through this 
war the wage-earner must be protected in his full 
rights, and he must emerge from the war no less 
a man than he was when the war began. Church 
members should keep their eye on the State Legis- 
lature, and immediately protest against every at- 
tempt on the part of the politicians to do away with 
regulations which are sound. 



WAR AND THE J^ATION'S LARGER CALL 
By RoBEET E. SpeeKj D.D. 

AT this time there must be no contraction 
in the great missionary undertakings 
of the Church. We are called now, 
in these days, more vividly than ever before, 
to aim, distinctly and unhesitatingly, at en- 
largement. We are called to this by the fact that 
the war has transferred a larger measure of 
the missionary obligation to America. Those of 
us who were present at the Edinburgh Missionary 
Conference in 1910 will remember the statements 
by both the German and British delegates who were 
there, in recognition of the fact that the primacy in 
the missionary undertaking had even then crossed 
the sea. That burden has been immensely increased 
in the years that have gone by. It may be that the 
European churches, barring a few of them, the 
Moravians and the French Evangelical churches, 
will not be largely dependent upon us for financial 
assistance, but for many a day they will need the 
life that America can give and that America alone 
will have to spare. I imagine in no sections of the 
world will this new duty be more distinct than 
among the Mohammedan nations. It is a burden 
resting heavily upon many a Christian conscience 

66 



THE CHEISTIAI^ I^ WAE TIME 6Y 

in Germany to-day as to how tlie Mohammedan 
problem is to be dealt with by German churches in 
the future, in view of the alliances of the present 
war. In more regards than there is time to speak 
of here, the war has passed over a heavier weight 
of missionary duty upon the churches of America. 
In the face of that larger obligation, dare we talk 
of standing still, still less of drawing back ? 

The war has brought us into new relations of 
understanding and of sympathy. Both southward 
and westward we have heavily increased our mis- 
sionary duty. It has been one of the saddest facts 
of international relationship, for the last half gen- 
eration at least, that there has been a growing feel- 
ing of alienation between the Latin- American na- 
tions and the United States, that men like Manuel 
Tlgarte, who held the devotion of many of the 
young men of Latin America, could go up and 
down those lands, like a flame of fire, preaching 
the doctrine of deep isolation and dislike between 
the Latin- American nations and their nearest 
neighbors, who should be their best friends, north 
of the Eio Grande. At the same time, Latin 
America's devotion has been given in unstinted 
measure for years to France. And it would seem 
to be something in the providence of God that the 
new relations into which we have been drawn with 
France might be the bridge over the chasm that 
has opened between us and Latin America_, and 
that our common kinship and association with 



68 THE CHEISTIAN IIS" WAR TIME 

France to-day might reunite us who had been so 
rapidly and bitterly drifting apart here in these 
Western lands. Between ourselves and Japan and 
China also new understandings and confidences 
have grown up on account of the war. Our mis- 
sionary duty southward and westward has been 
multiplied twofold at least by the developments 
of the war abroad. 

The war has increased our missionary obliga- 
tions by more deeply revealing the world's need of 
the gospel to heal its sin and make it one. I 
had with me, in my home recently, a Japanese 
friend. He had been only a few days before to 
hear Dr. Jefferson preach, and he said: "Mr. 
Speer, I see clearly that if there is any solution 
at all to this great problem, there is only one solu- 
tion. That is Christ. Christ alone can meet the 
need of the world and unite the hearts of men." 
We see to-day the futility of every other device 
with which men have dreamed of binding the 
nations together. There is no peace of Dives. I^o 
strands of political or diplomatic understanding 
can relate the nations inseparably. We see now 
that war will be done away in Christ or it will 
never be done away at all, and, seeing this so 
clearly to-day, our duty to act upon this convic- 
tion is deepened and intensified, and our mission- 
ary obligation many-fold enlarged. 

It is enlarged, oh ! how mightily it is enlarged, 
by the visible and tragic need of the world for an 



THE CHKISTIAN" IN WAR TIME 69 

incarnation of a universal brotherly love. It will 
not do to talk and emotionalize over it. It will 
not do to pass resolutions regarding it, nor to send 
communications describing its glory, from one 
nation to another. The thing never will be made 
a reality except by incarnation, by such actual 
functionings of the Christian church across the 
world as will utter visibly and tangibly to men the 
gpirit of a universal trust and love. To abate any 
of our duty of missionary activity, to call in the 
foreign missionaries, to reduce the work they are 
doing, is to stultify our declaration that we believe 
in a world brotherhood, or that we would penetrate 
mankind with a spirit of universal goodwill and 
friendship. Words can never make that real to 
the world. And if in this day we contract our 
acts, no expansion of our speech will ever make 
good our betrayal. We are called by the very facts 
of the world before us now to enlarge the agencies 
and visible functionings of the incarnation of love 
in flesh and blood that goes out from us, to express 
love and kinship to the nations. 

We need the missionary enterprise to-day for 
these great purposes more than it has ever been 
needed in the history of the world before. We 
need it as an expression in the flesh of our convic- 
tion that humanity is one. We need it because it 
alone embodies a true doctrine of race function 
and race relationship. We need it because it ap- 
pears to be about the only instrumentality of 



TO THE CHKISTIAIT m WAK TIME 

Christianity that utters a clear and uncompro- 
mised super-nationalistic principle. How hard is 
our problem to-day in all these lands in dealing 
with the question of the relationship of Chris- 
tianity and the spirit of nationalism! Has the 
problem been solved in any of these nations ? While 
we work at it let us not abandon those great ele- 
ments in Christianity which rise above even na- 
tionality. Whatever else we may surrender, let 
us not surrender the missionary enterprise. We 
can hold this fast to-day with no betrayal of our 
own nationalistic loyalty. And we need it. The 
new world that is coming needs it. Let us en- 
large its functionings, and expand its activities, 
building up increasingly the bond which we have 
in it, which carries love across the gulf of race 
and nation and seeks to make mankind genuinely 
one. We need it because, in these days of strife 
and conflict over all the world, it seems to be about 
the only agency of international service that we 
possess. We are beginning to learn in these last 
few months that it is competent for a nation to 
give money away to other nations. It has been a 
long, slow lesson for us to learn, and maybe we 
shall forget it soon again. But we learned long 
ago and shall not forget that we have open in mis- 
sionary enterprise free channels for interdenomi- 
national and international and inter-racial service. 
We need these to-day, not to be abridged, but to 
be extended. 



THE CHKISTIAI^ IIST WAE TIME 71 

l!Tot only do the conditions of this present hour 
forbid our considering for one moment the pro- 
posal that we should stop our missionary task. We 
face conditions that issue to us, in the language of 
this theme, a larger call. And it is not only a 
larger call to world love, uttered actually and 
tangibly in human lives, to which we are called 
now. We need the missionary undertaking un- 
diminished because of the hope that it embodies 
and to which it steadfastly adheres. These are 
dark and doubtful days for many of us, when many 
a man whose Christian faith has not wavered be- 
gins to wonder whether after all the dream ever 
can come true. All around us these coming 
months, as the shadows darken and those come 
not back to us who went out from us — all the 
more in those days will the heavy doubts arise. 
We need to hold fast to an undertaking that 
tenaciously grasps the world hope, the confidence 
that the kingdom of God is to be in all the world, 
that can sing as some of the lads on the Espagne 
were singing as they sailed : "My anchor holds. It 
holds. My anchor holds." 

The function of the Christian church is a 
double one. The church is a witness to possibilities 
that lie beyond the facts. The church never was 
meant to be the mere guaranty of what has be- 
come established. That has been its shame in past 
days. It has been thought of only as a religious 
sanction of the status quo. The real business of 



72 THE CHRISTIAN m WAR TIME 

the Christian church has been to witness to the 
possibilities that were not yet seen, that lay in- 
visible far beyond, that were themselves a contra- 
diction of the existing facts. The Christian church 
is also the power by which these possibilities are 
to be made facts, and all facts contradictory to 
them to be denied and overridden and done away. 
Both as witness and as power the church needs the 
breadth and boldness of the missionary hopes. We 
need to hold fast on the world plane to an under- 
taking that will not let go the idea of a world 
brotherhood, that will work for that, and even in 
these days when mankind is rent asunder, will ig- 
nore the chasm and will send out its representa- 
tives across the whole world, speaking its message 
of a world love and holding fast to its dream of a 
world hope. 



THE CHEISTIAI^ IN" WAK TIME 
By William C. Hull, Ph.D. 

WAR is a diversification, accentuation and 
consummation of all evil. Hence, in 
war-time, the Christian is trebly intent 
upon obedience to his Leader's divine command 
to overcome evil with good. 

War makes a direct and overwhelming appeal to 
patriotism. Hence in war-time the Christian is 
doubly concerned to apply to patriotism as to all 
other human virtues the test of God's will and 
God's summons. He believes that patriotism is 
genuine, and fruitful of good, only when it is 
based upon an earnest seeking after and implicit 
obedience to the will of God; and he recognizes 
and obeys the call of his country only when he 
hears in it also the call of his God. 

War is a violent and dramatic expression of 
nationalism, the challenge or disregard of world 
welfare by national interests. Hence in war-time 
the Christian is eager to preserve and to realize 
his Leader's ideal of the universal fatherhood of 
God and the universal brotherhood of men. 

The evil that men do in war, at home as well 
as against the enemy, is manifold and well-nigh 
overwhelming ; and it is only through divine grace 

3 



74 THE CHRISTIAN IN WAR TIME 

and courage that the Christian is enabled to con- 
front the evil of a world in arms by a patient and 
loving determination to overcome this evil by 
good. The men who go down to Jericho and fall 
among thieves, in war-time, constitute nearly the 
whole population of the warring nations; hence 
the task of the good Samaritan includes the bind- 
ing up of the nation's wounds, the care of the 
widowed and the orphaned, the multiplied increase 
of the world's food supply in a desperate effort 
to ward off world famine, a self-sacrificing devo- 
tion to the science and art of curing disease and 
checking pestilence, the defense of the weak 
against the strong in industry, the preservation of 
freedom from human tyranny over the bodies, 
minds and consciences of men. 

Christian patriotism in war as in peace is both 
more inclusive and more exclusive than the brand 
of patriotism which is flamboyant especially in 
war-time. It includes the higher welfare of the 
country as well as, or even in opposition to, its 
material interests; for it applies to the nation as 
rigidly as to individuals the test of Christ. What 
is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul ? It excludes the vain, the 
false, the shallow, which are too often epitomized 
in the fetish of the flag, and which make patriotism 
the last refuge of scoundrels ; for it acts upon the 
belief that righteousness alone exalteth a nation. 

While the Christian goes to the uttermost limit 



THE CHRISTIAl^ IN WAK TIME Y5 

of conscience in obeying the laws of his country, 
and scrnpuously renders unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's, he draws a sharp line at that limit 
and holds infinitely more sacred the things that 
are God's. ITor will he permit his conscience to 
be lulled or swerved by the acclaims or demands 
of the vox populi, which is far less certain in war- 
time than in peace-time to be the vox Dei. Pre- 
cisely when the popular tide is flowing strong to- 
wards war, the Christian painfully strives to re- 
new the tenderness of his conscience and to seek 
the guiding light of principles which are eternal 
and of that Power which stands back of circum- 
stance and time. 

It is a natural and a pleasing trait of man to 
desire to cooperate heartily with his fellows; and 
the Christian especially, with his strong sense of 
fellowship for all men, is rejoiced when he can 
join hands in the pursuit of the same high ends 
and holy objects which his fellow countrymen are 
seeking. But above the tumult of the search, he 
listens constantly for the admonitions of the 
Divine and obeys implicitly when the injunction 
comes, Thus far, and no farther shalt thou go. 
With his allegiance to both the mission and the 
methods of Christ, he must carefully and prayer- 
fully test by Christ's standard both the aims and 
the methods of his country; and he must stead- 
fastly reject the wicked vow, "My Country, Eight 
or Wrong," whether it refer to the objects which 



76 THE 0HEISTIA:N' IK WAR TIME 

his country seeks or to the means by which it 
strives to achieve them. This often requires a 
touch of the patience as well as of the courage of 
Christ, and the self-denial which forbids the break- 
ing of Heaven's laws even for the attainment of 
Heaven's ends. 

The Christian patriot rejoices when his service 
to God is consistent with service to country, and he 
believes that there are many kinds of service even 
in war-time which have this highest kind of con- 
sistency. Thus, he believes that home and foreign 
mission work, increasing and distributing the food 
supply, maintaining unimpaired the education of 
the young, and the varied moral, and religious 
service of men which have made the last century 
illustrious in time of peace, must all be prosecuted 
with increased vigor amidst the clash of arms. For 
such service is of the very essence of patriotism, 
since it ministers unto the soul of the nation ; and 
it is service which God needs to have done pre- 
eminently in war-time, if He is to bring good out 
of the evil of war and to sow the seeds of future 
spiritual harvests in the lives of men and nations 
which are to be gathered after the war is over. 

Finally, as the Christian must ever have before 
his inner eye the vision of the Celestial City as 
he pursues his earthly journey, so in his loyalty to 
the highest interests of his country he must keep 
ever bright within his mind his Master's ideal of 
the brotherhood of men. Hence, in war-time he 



THE CHKISTIAIT IN WAR TIME TT 

must strive constantly to mitigate tlie evils of war- 
fare wliicli the enemy is compelled to endure; lie 
must insist tliat the standards of humanity adopted 
at The Hague for the conduct of war shall be fully 
lived up to by his own country's armies, even 
though they be disregarded by their opponents. 
He must devote his money, and, if possible, his 
personal service to protecting noncombatants from 
the rigors of war, and to reconstructing the homes 
and lives of war's victims. Above all, he must 
look steadfastly beyond the war to the peace that 
is to follow it, and strive his uttermost to make 
tha,t peace come at the earliest possible moment 
and to organize it so that it will endure forever. 
For that purpose, he must influence his country to 
go into negotiations in the spirit of whole-hearted 
goodwill and, if need be, of self-sacrifice, and thus 
incline the other countries to justice and mutual 
regard. And he must k6ep ever foremost in the 
negotiations, neither the solution of the knotty 
problems of past diplomacy, nor the gratification 
of present national ambitions, — his own nation's 
included, — but the development of that interna- 
tional organization in which all forward-looking 
men see the chief hope of the future. That inter- 
national organization which prophets like Isaiah 
and Ladd have foreseen, which statesmen like 
Penn and Wilson have outlined, and which the two 
conferences at The Hague have inaugurated, is 
not only the chief hope of humanity's international 



78 THE CHRISTIAI^ IN WAR TIME 

future, but it is by unmistakable signs the God- 
given task of this generation to achieve. Hand in 
hand with the world's forward-looking statesmen, 
all upward-looking Christians will strive to make 
this dream a reality, to create this element of the 
Kingdom of God here on earth and in this our 
time. 



cheistia:n' feiendship aeter war 

By Rev. Ekancis E. Clakk, D.D. 
(Reprinted from The Congregationalist) 

AS a source of possible comfort to tlie timor- 
ous souls who believe that the people of 
the world are permanently rent in twain 
by "the greatest war of history/' may I relate an 
incident that occurred in Cape Town at the close 
of the Boer War ? 

It was my fortune to be in South Africa shortly 
before the war began, and to see something of the 
officials of both sides who soon afterwards were 
engaged in one of the bitterest, if not one of the 
greatest, of wars. Eeeling ran high among both 
Boers and British. The Boers felt that they were 
being pushed to the wall and that there was noth- 
ing left for them but to fight. Old President 
Kruger was so incensed that though (I was told) 
he knew English perfectly, he would not speak it 
in the interview with me, but demanded an inter- 
preter to translate what he said into English. This 
was only an example of the bitterness of feeling 
on the part of the Boers at that time, which was 
not to be wondered at. 

Within a very few months after the war closed, 

79 



80 THE CHEISTIA^ IN WAE TIME 

I was again in South. Africa, and attended a meet- 
ing of the Dutch and English Christian Endeavor 
Unions in the Adderley Street Dutch Church in 
Cape Town. I was surprised and greatly pleased 
to see mottoes of welcome and good cheer on the 
wall, in both the English and Dutch languages. 
The President of the Dutch Union gave the ad- 
dress of welcome and the President of the English 
Union presided over the joint meeting. 

In the audience were many young Bo^rs who 
had been imprisoned in St. Helena and Ceylon, 
where they had formed many Christian Endeavor 
societies. They had been released from their is- 
land prisons but a few weeks before. In the same 
audience were many young British soldiers who 
had also belonged to Christian Endeavor societies, 
in Great Britain or in South Africa. But the ut- 
most good feeling prevailed. The young men of 
both races and of both languages took part in the 
meeting and they united in repeating, each in his 
own language, the Twenty-third Psalm and the 
Lord's Prayer, and in singing, before the meeting 
was over, the familiar hymn, "Blest be the tie 
that binds our hearts in Christian love." 

This was the first meeting of the sort which took 
place in South Africa after the war when both 
races met together, and, though the guns were 
hardly cool and the memories of the war still 
rankled in many hearts, yet reconciliation had al- 
ready begun, and it came about through the com- 



THE CHRISTIAN m WAR TIME 81 

mon principles and common religious aims and 
methods of the young men in both armies. 

This experience and one or two others that are 
not dissimilar, have given me reason to believe 
that the enmities of this present war, bitter as they 
are, and accompanied by nameless cruelties, will 
not last forever. The average human heart does 
not cherish grudges so long as we sometimes think. 
There are many organizations common to the 
Allies and to the Teutonic forces which will make 
for friendship, and not the least of these will 
be the interdenominational religious organizations 
which have bound together the hearts of so many 
younger people and older people in the past, and 
whose ties are not readily broken. These organi- 
zations will have a great work to do when the war 
is over, and I believe that they are. preparing to do 
it to the very best of their ability. 



THE DUTY OF THE CHUECH m THIS 
HOUR OF E"ATIO]SrAL N'EED 

A Message from the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, in Special 
Session Assembled at Washington, D. C, May 
8 and 9, 1917. 

I. OuK Spirit and Purpose 

AFTER long patience, and with a solemn 
sense of responsibility, the government 
of the United States has been forced to 
recognize that a state of war exists between this 
country and Germany, and the President has 
called upon all the people for their loyal support 
and their whole-hearted allegiance. As Ameri- 
can citizens, members of Christian Churches 
gathered in Federal Council, we are here to 
pledge both support and allegiance in unstinted 
measure. 

We are Christians as well as citizens. Upon us 
therefore rests a double responsibility. We owe 
it to our country to maintain intact and to trans- 
mit unimpaired to our descendants our heritage 
of freedom and democracy. Above and beyond 
this, we must be loyal to our divine Lord, who 

82 



THE CHEISTIA:N" in WAE time 83 

gave His life tliat the world might be redeemed, 
and whose loving purpose embraces every man and 
every nation. 

As citizens of a peace-loving nation, we abhor 
war. We have long striven to secure the judicial 
settlement of all international disputes. But 
since, in spite of every effort, war has come, we are 
grateful that the ends to which we are committed 
are such as we can approve. To vindicate the 
principles of righteousness and the inviolability of 
faith as between nation and nation; to safeguard 
the right of all the peoples, great and small alike, 
to live their life in freedom and peace; to resist 
and overcome the forces that would prevent the 
union of the nations in a commonwealth of free 
peoples conscious of unity in the pursuit of ideal 
ends — ^these are aims for which every one of us 
may lay down our all, even life itself. 

We enter the war without haste or passion, not 
for private or national gain, with no hatred nor 
bitterness against those with whom we contend. 

No man can foresee the issue of the struggle. It 
will call for all the strength and heroism of which 
the nation is capable. What now is the mission of 
the church in this hour of crisis and danger ? It 
is to bring all that is done or planned in the 
nation's name to the test of the mind of Christ. 

That mind upon one point we do not all in- 
terpret alike. With sincere conviction some of us 
believe that it is forbidden the disciple of Christ 



84 THE CHKISTIAK IIT WAK TIME 

to engage in war under any circumstances. Most 
of us believe that the love of all men which Christ 
enjoins, demands that we defend with all the power 
given us the sacred rights of humanity. But we 
are all at one in loyalty to our country, and in 
steadfast and whole-hearted devotion to her service. 

As members of the church of Christ, the hour 
lays upon us special duties: 

To purge our own hearts clean of arrogance 
and selfishness ; 

To steady and inspire the nation ; 

To keep ever before the eyes of ourselves and of 
our allies the ends for which we fight; 

To hold our own nation true to its professed 
aims of justice, liberty and brotherhood ; 

To testify to our fellow-Christians in every land, 
most of all to those from whom for the time we 
are estranged, our consciousness of unbroken unity 
in Christ; 

To unite in the fellowship of service multitudes 
who love their enemies and are ready to join with 
them in rebuilding the waste places as soon as 
peace shall come; 

To be diligent in works of relief and mercy, not 
forgetting those ministries to the spirit to which, 
as Christians, we are especially committed ; 

To keep alive the spirit of prayer, that in these 
times of strain and sorrow men may be sustained 
by the consciousness of the presence and power of 
God; 



THE CHRISTIAiN' IK WAR TIME 85 

To hearten those who go to the front, and to com- 
fort their loved ones at home ; 

To care for the welfare of our young men in the 
army and navy, that they may be fortified in 
character and made strong to resist temptation ; 

To be vigilant against every attempt to arouse 
the spirit of vengeance and unjust suspicion to- 
ward those of foreign birth or sympathies; 

To protect the rights of conscience against every 
attempt to invade them; 

To maintain our Christian institutions and activ- 
ities unimpaired, the observance of the Lord's Day 
and the study of the Holy Scriptures, that the soul 
of our nation may be nourished and renewed 
through the worship and service of Almighty God ; 

To guard the gains of education, and of social 
progress and economic freedom, won at so great 
a cost, and to make full use of the occasion to set 
them still further forwarcj, even by and through 
the war; 

To keep the open mind and the forward look, 
that the lessons learned in war may not be forgot- 
ten when comes that just and sacred peace for 
which we pray ; 

Above all, to call men everywhere to new obe- 
dience to the will of our Father God, who in Christ 
has given Himself in supreme self-sacrifice for the 
redemption of the world, and who invites us to 
share with Him His ministry of reconciliation. 

To such service we would summon our fellow- 



86 THE CHRISTIAN IIlT WAR TIME 

Christians of every name. In this spirit we would 
dedicate ourselves and all that we have to the 
nation's cause. With this hope we would join 
hands with all men of goodwill of every land 
and race, to rebuild on this war-ridden and deso- 
lated earth the commonwealth of mankind, and to 
make of the kingdoms of the world the Kingdom 
of the Christ. 

11. OuK Practical Duties 

"Army and Navy. For the moral and spiritual 
welfare of the army and navy the churches are in 
chief measure responsible. They should therefore 
cultivate a close relationship to the Army and 
Navy Chaplains who are the accredited ministers 
of the churches and should dignify and strengthen 
their service. They should cordially sustain and 
reinforce the work of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, which is an especially equipped and 
well-tried arm of the church for ministering to men 
in the camp. They should also sympathetically 
support the plans of the American Bible Society to 
make the Scriptures available for every soldier and 
sailor of the army and navy. 

"The Liquor Traffic. In this time of crisis the 
Federal Council urges the churches to use their 
utmost endeavors to secure national prohibition as 
a war measure, demanded alike by economic, moral 
and religious considerations. The liquor traffic 



THE CHEISTIAK m WAE TIME 87 

consumed last year foodstuffs sufficient to feed 
7,000,000 men for a year, required the toil of 75,- 
000' farmers for six months to furnish these food- 
stuffs, engaged 62,920 wage-earners needed in 
legitimate industry and exacted a heavy toll of life. 
The nation cannot afford this economic and moral 
waste. 

^'The Social Evil. War increases lust and its 
deadly consequences. The efforts of the govern- 
ment, of the Federal Council and of the Young 
Men's Christian Association to prevent its develop- 
ment in mobilization camps will not fully succeed 
unless the nearby churches and allied organizations 
see that vice and liquor are repressed in their 
communities and unless they assist in providing 
wholesome social and recreational activities for the 
men. All the churches will need to watch lest 
the excitement and strain of the hour lower the 
sex standards of the community. 

^'Belief Work. The increased suffering of war 
time demands increased gifts and service. The 
churches should organize themselves to strengthen 
the American Red Cross by membership and the 
preparation of supplies, to care in friendship for 
all the needs of the families of men in national 
service, to increase their gifts to foreign war re- 
lief and to those European religious bodies which 
the Federal Council is already assisting. 

" Child Welfare. To meet the depletion of war 
the vitality of the rising generation needs to be 



88 THE CHKISTIAK m WAE TIME 

conserved and developed. It is more important 
than ever for tlie churches to aid in removing the 
community conditions that make for defective 
lives, and in securing sound measures of health 
and sanitation, of housing and nourishment, of 
recreation and education. The mobilization oi 
youth for increased food production affords a 
starting point for permanent community provision 
for the recreational and vocational needs of young 
people. 

"Increased Production of Food. The world is 
short of food. The safety of the nation and the 
outcome of the war depend largely upon our ability 
to increase the crops. This is an urgent national 
duty. The suburban and rural churches may well 
call the people together to consider community 
plans to this end. 

''Prevention of Waste. In face of the world 
need, extravagance and luxury are criminal, but 
productive business should be maintained at its 
fullest possible capacity. The simple life, which 
is a permanent obligation for the followers of 
Jesus, becomes in this emergency an imperative 
necessity. The women of the churches may well 
get together to consider and recommend sound 
economics in food and clothing. 

"Industrial Standards. The labor power of the 
nation must be conserved or the needed increase in 
production cannot be secured, as England has dis- 
covered. The industrial standards set up by the 



THE CHRISTIAN" m WAR TIME 89 

Federal Council and its constituent bodies must be 
maintained. All cases of seven-day work, of 
lengthened working day, of the employment of 
children and young people under sixteen, or of 
women in the new hazardous industries, should 
at once be reported to local authorities or to the 
l^ational Council of Defense. 

''Justice in Distribution. The churches should 
stimulate the community conscience to demand 
that all speculation in the necessities of life be 
eliminated, that all attempts to secure unjust 
profits be checked and that the hoarding of food- 
stuffs be prevented. Government action to this 
end should be heartily supported. 

"The Cost of War. The burden of war cost 
must be evenly distributed. The principle of uni- 
versal service has been applied to life in the rais- 
ing of troops. It should therefore be applied in the 
same manner to wealth and ability. 

"Safeguarding Democracy. If we are to ad- 
vance democracy throughout the earth we must 
first exemplify it in the nation. It must not be 
denied, either in industry or in government. Even 
in the strain of war, the abuse of free speech is 
not so dangerous as its suppression, and nothing 
should be permitted to destroy the dearly bought 
right of freedom of conscience. One of the 
patriotic duties of the Christian pulpit is contin- 
uously to develop in the people the determination 



90 THE CHRISTIAN" IN" WAR TIME 

that this war shall end in nothing less than such 
a constructive peace as shall be the beginning of a 
world democracy." 

By order of the Council, 

Feank Mason IsToeth, 

President, 

Chaeles S. Macfaeland^ 
General Secretary. 

Washington, D. C, May 10, 1917. 



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